Modern Billiards / A Complete Text-Book of the Game, Containing Plain and Practical Instructions How to Play and Acquire Skill at This Scientific Amusement

by Benjamin Garno

1859.

First Technically Public Contest. Fireman’s Hall, Detroit, Mich., April 10th.—$250 a side. Dudley Kavanagh, New York, 1000—8.47—177; Michael Foley, Detroit, 989—87. This match was the first to which an admission fee was charged.

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Michael Phelan (New York) vs. John Seereiter (Detroit). Same hall, April 11th, $5,000 a side, on table taken from Seereiter’s room (used night before by K. and F.), but having a new cloth. P., 2000—12.20—129; S., 1904—157.

Admission was five dollars, but this charge was rather to keep the wrong persons out than to profit from letting the right ones in. Phelan was out-nursed, but he outbetted the Detroiters, and both outgeneraled and generally outbetted their representative.